God Bless America the title says it all

God Bless America the title says it all

TIM PAGE, Washington Post

Published
5:30 am CDT, Saturday, September 22, 2001

The song of the moment is more than 80 years old.

In the days since the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Irving Berlin's God Bless America has been played and sung repeatedly throughout the United States -- in the halls of Congress, after Broadway shows, at major-league baseball parks, in the Washington National Cathedral and, of course, on countless less formal occasions. For the moment, it may even have surpassed the national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, in mass popularity.

"The idea of bombs bursting in air has suddenly taken on a strange connotation," Robert Kimball, a musical-theater historian and co-editor of the forthcoming Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, said. "And, in a funny way, God Bless America is almost beyond the national anthem. It's always been reserved for very special occasions -- and this is certainly one of them."

Susan Elliott, editor of Musical America.com, a Web site for the classical-music industry, believes there are two central reasons for the appeal of God Bless America. "First, the lyrics do not beat around the bush. It's `God bless America, land that I love.' ... That's exactly the way we all feel right now. We don't have to weave our way through `O! say, can you see by the dawn's early light' or `My country, 'tis of thee.' We get right to the point in the first three words -- `God bless America.'

"Another reason -- it's a lot easier to sing than The Star-Spangled Banner."

Frances Richard, vice president of concert music for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, remembers singing God Bless America while growing up in New York during World War II. "We sang it more than TheStar-Spangled Banner. ... I haven't heard it as much in recent years. ... But now my grandson is playing it with his middle-school band."

Ironically, it began life as a rejected number for a traveling revue Berlin had put together in 1918 to drum up patriotism after the United States entered World War I. Twenty years later, on the eve of World War II, Berlin took another look at the song, which he had all but forgotten.

"With a little editing and the deletion of a couple of bellicose phrases, he had a new song declaring his love for the country to which he believed he owed everything he had," according to Berlin biographer Edward Jablonski.

Berlin generally guarded his copyrights with a phalanx of lawyers. Yet he knew that God Bless America was special, and in this one case he surrendered all his royalties -- to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, who have made more than $6 million from the song.

"The notion spread that God Bless America should be adopted as the national anthem," Jablonski wrote. "Berlin himself was adamantly opposed, saying `There's only one national anthem, which can never be replaced.' "